Ian Slater: World in Flames

“No—” Robert replied, “not the Prices — that other couple. The soldier and the girl. Confetti still on them. Remember?”

“Soldier?”

“Well, he was wearing civvies, but he looked to me like a junior officer — NCO maybe.”

“I don’t understand,” Rosemary said, winding her passenger window down a tad in an effort to thwart any more misting up on the inside of the windshield. “What’s so funny about them being on the same road? There’s no other highway to speak of. I should think it’s likely we’ll see them again.”

Robert shrugged. He tried to remember whether the yellow Honda Civic that had passed them had had “Just Married” sprayed on the side, but he hadn’t noticed. It was sprinkling rain again, and he turned on the wipers. “It’s just that they started out long before we did.”

“Maybe they stopped somewhere for the fog to clear, too.” He nodded in acquiescence. For several seconds they drove on in silence. Soon they saw the taillights again, at first thinking they were the lorry’s but then realizing the two red lights weren’t far enough apart for a truck, the lorry having apparently overtaken the car on one of the pass-bys. “Any other points of interest along this road — before Ayre?” he asked Rosemary casually. “Before we get to Burns’s cottage?”

“I don’t—” she began, stifling a yawn, “—know. Why?”

“Just wondered. Wouldn’t want to miss anything. McRae’d send a lynch party.”

“You want me to look up the map?” she offered unenthusiastically.

“Nope,” he said. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I do hope this fog clears,” said Rosemary, peering ahead at the dim gray strip of bitumen a few feet in front of them. “If not, we will be doomed up at Glencoe. Daddy told me the Highland mists are always much worse. Won’t see a thing. Perhaps we should stop at Glasgow for a bite. Give the weather a chance to improve?”

“Aye, lass,” he said.

“You have a terrible Scottish accent. Did you know that?”

“I’m working on it. You want to eat in Glasgow then?”

“Do you?” For a moment Robert Brentwood was back in his family’s home in New York. It was his mother’s habit to ask his father five or six times whether he was sure he wanted to do something after he’d said that’s what he wanted to do. Drove him nuts. Her repetition, his father had written Robert, had been particularly bad after Ray had been wounded, her nerves shot to pieces — the trying repetition of every “goddamn question” clearly a symptom of her anxiety. Robert knew in Rosemary’s case the repetition was thoughtfulness on her part, not wanting him to feel obligated to do anything he didn’t really care to do, particularly given the short time he had ashore. But Rosemary, too, had changed between the engagement and the wedding, her nerves and her sense of self trembling like so many in Britain who’d experienced the sudden dangers of modern war. For the submariner, it might be the fear of ASROCs coming down at you out of nowhere — for civilians, like Rosemary and her family, it was the terrifying cacophony of massed Soviet rocket attacks.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll eat in Glasgow.”

“You sure? It might clear up. You never know in the Highlands apparently. Daddy told me you can have rain, sun, and sleet all in one morning.”

“You’re as cheerful as old McRae.”

“I’m trying not to plan things too far in advance, that’s all. On your honeymoon you’re supposed to be carefree. Anyway, as your best man would say, I guess it’s ‘no use frettin’.’ “

They were getting closer to the car.

“You know your southern accent is terrible?” he said.

“Yes, I know. So?”

“We’ll stop for chow in Glasgow, and what happens, happens.”

“Yes.”

“They have any places to pull off up in the Highlands?”

“Oh, lots of them,” Rosemary said encouragingly. “Or so Father says. Road’s so narrow in places, you have to go off just to let another car pass.”

“So who has right of way?”

“No one,” she said. “First in, first served.”

“Sounds like a Texas whorehouse.”

“Robert —really! And what, pray, do you know about Texas whorehouses?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing. Shipboard talk, that’s all. Tell me more about these Highlands.”

“They’re supposed to be wildly beautiful,” she said. “Forlorn but beautiful.”

“And there are lots of places to pull off?” he said, leering.

“My Lord, is that all you can think about? I would have thought you’d had enough for one day.” She adopted her stern, schoolmarmish pose. “Anyway, you’ll just have to wait till we get to Mallaig.”

“How far’s that?”

“About a hundred and sixty miles.”

“Don’t know if I’ll make it,” he said, reaching out for her.

She pushed his hand away. “You stay alert, Captain, otherwise neither of us’ll make it. You’ll have us in the bracken, and tha’s a fact.”

For a moment he glimpsed red taillights again, but then the rain came down in sheets and they had to slow to a crawl. “Damn,” he said, above the whine of the wipers, “this is tougher than driving a sub.”

In the heavy rain, they missed Burns’s cottage. Rosemary was disappointed but didn’t press to go back. They’d only a week left of his leave before he’d once again set out on war patrol.

“Sorry, sweetie,” he apologized. “I was so busy looking at the damn road—”

“Oh, never mind,” she said gaily. “We’ll see it another time.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s a promise.” Both of them fell silent, the rain coming down so hard on the roof, it made a steady drumming sound and was splashing up from the narrow road, but they didn’t mind. It gave them a cozy feeling together inside the car, like being in a cave, safe from the raging forces outside their control.

“We’ll stop at Glasgow,” he said, “if we find it.”

When Kurt Schulz entered the swirling grayness of the stratus above the Harz and could no longer glimpse the reassuring green khaki parachute above him, he had the distinct sensation of going down a lot more slowly than he really was. His worst fear was not realized as he saw the tall pines glide past, his landing on open ground in the mist-shrouded outskirts of Stolberg in the Harz Mountains near a copse of poplar, and spotted by an old villager out walking his dog. As the German shepherd ran toward Schulz, the pilot, a dog lover, intuitively went down on his left knee, left hand resting on it, his right hand hanging loosely, fingers cupped, his body loose in as nonthreatening a pose as he could make, fingers snapping. “Here, boy! Good boy!” The villager stood and watched, his pipe hanging loosely from aged, stained teeth above a stomach that, despite the economic hardships of living in the GDR, had consumed its fair share of German beer. His dog’s tail began wagging. The villager whistled quietly over to the flier, looking about them anxiously, almost tripping on a patch of moss. “Hier kommen!”

It looked all right, but Shulz knew that if the Grenztruppen — “border troops”—had seen him coming down, the villager would have no alternative. Then he saw the man’s short-barreled shotgun slung across his back.

“Haben Sie amerikanisch Zigaretten?” —”Have you any American cigarettes?”—asked the villager.

“No,” Schulz told him, astonished by the question. He wished he had a bagful. A truckload.

The old man shrugged philosophically. Schulz decided to act quickly, to take no chances. He could easily overpower the old man if he was quick enough and shot the dog first. But then the dog began pawing at him, tail wagging. Intuitively, or perhaps because of his long boyhood association with pets of his own, Schulz began scratching behind the dog’s ear, the shepherd nuzzling into him the harder he scratched.